


Soften Every Edge

by glorious_spoon



Series: Tumblr/Twitter Prompt Fic [43]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Humor, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 11:41:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20290873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: In the early days of their relationship, Magnus and Alec explore one another.





	Soften Every Edge

**Author's Note:**

> This is for an anon Tumblr prompt that asked for Malec exploring each other's bodies. It.... got away from me a little.

Wounds healed with an _iratze_ don’t leave scars, but Alec still has a few. Ironically, they’re mostly from minor injuries, little things that he didn’t bother healing magically. The worst wounds leave no scars, but that doesn’t mean that his body is unmarked. There’s a tiny white _vee_ under his chin where he split it climbing a tree as a child, a handful of deep pockmarks scattered down his left knee and shin that he won’t explain for the longest time. Magnus thinks they must be the result of some truly dire injury until the day that Alec shamefacedly admits that he actually took most of the skin off his shins in an incident involving a unicycle and a dare from Jace.

“It’s not _that_ funny,” he says, but there’s a smile twitching the corners of his mouth as Magnus waves a hand at him, wipes at his streaming eyes. He’s almost managed to get himself back under control when Alec adds, “Jace wanted to run away and join the circus when we were kids, but at least I didn’t let him talk me into wearing the clown nose, that would have just been humiliating,” and Magnus is off again. He laughs until his stomach hurts, until Alec flops onto the couch next to him and pulls him into a long kiss.

Magnus is still snickering when they break apart. “In fairness, shadowhunter training would make for an excellent circus act.”

“Yeah, that’s what Jace said,” Alec says, laughter glinting in his eyes. 

“Ah,” Magnus says, and wipes at his eyes again, running a hand down Alec’s bare leg, over the scatter of shallow, long-healed divots in his skin, showing pale through dark body hair. “I’m sorry, Alexander. I didn’t want to ask in case it was something traumatic.”

“Hey. That was traumatic, believe me,” Alec says, leaning in to kiss him again. “But you can always ask, you know that.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Magnus says, and pulls Alec down on top of him. Alec goes, laughing and the conversation is abandoned for a time in favor of other pursuits.

*

The runes are a novelty that fascinates Magnus. Not just the enjoyable process of convincing Alec to twist them from their high holy design to pursuits of a decidedly less holy nature, but the magic itself. He’s rarely had the opportunity to study angelic magic directly, and certainly not like this: Alec sprawled out naked and sated in his bed, watching Magnus with an indulgent smile as he traces out the shapes of them with his fingers and occasionally his mouth. Even now Alec twitches slightly when he does that.

“I’m not going to be able to go again for a while,” he warns, voice low and rough in a way that seems to belie his words, as Magnus sucks a mark on the dark curve of a rune just below his ribs. It’s slightly raised, hotter than the skin around it and stinging faintly against his lips with an electric hum of alien magic. Like tasting lightning. It’s unexpectedly thrilling.

“I have faith in you, darling,” he says, when he finally lifts his head to see Alec watching him with an intent and glittering look. “But this is purely scientific.”

“I bet,” Alec says dryly, but his breath hitches when Magnus kisses the mark he just made.

“Does it feel different?” Magnus asks, curious, and leans down to suck another mark along the edge of the rune.

“A—” Alec’s breath hitches again, his hips shifting. “A little? I can’t--it’s a little more sensitive?” And then, “Magnus, if you’re going to keep doing that, I can’t—”

“Oh, I’m sure you can,” Magnus says, slightly breathless himself as he finally lifts his head. “But as I said, this is experimentation.”

“I’ll show you experimentation,” Alec grumbles, but he sounds pleased as he hooks his hands under Magnus’s shoulders and hauls him back up.

*

Magnus doesn’t really give much thought to his own body most days, other than considering how to decorate and display it to best effect. Even that is a skill that he’s honed over the centuries and doesn’t require much thought.

He’s not _indifferent_, certainly, to the pleasures of the flesh, but Alec is something else. Some of it is probably that he hasn’t generally made a habit of seducing virgins, and that eager inexperience has a certain novelty to it, but mostly it’s just Alec. Alec and his broad hands and clever mouth and his careful focus, his endless fascination with everything about Magnus.

“I like figuring out what you like,” he says, shrugging a little, the first time Magnus asks how on earth he learned to do _that_ with his mouth. There’s a pleased little curl at the corners of said mouth as he looks up at Magnus through his lashes, like he’s just pulled off a difficult move during training instead of sucking Magnus’s brains out through his dick.

“Well,” Magnus manages, “top marks on that one.”

“Thank you,” Alec says, and presses a smile to his thigh. His fingers curl around Magnus’s hips, thumbs rubbing little circles where skin is stretched taut over the bone, and the comfortable, possessive nature of the gesture makes something in Magnus stutter, startled and warm.

He cards his fingers through Alec’s soft hair, finds himself smiling helplessly when Alec leans into his touch with a soft, blissful noise. Alec is like that, greedy for physical contact in a way that Magnus would never have predicted on their first meeting. Eager both to touch and be touched.

Magnus slides his hand through Alec’s hair again, then cups his jaw, and then, instead of pulling him up, he slides down to the floor to straddle Alec’s thighs and pull him into a kiss, like he can communicate that warm, fierce feeling that he’s not yet ready to name with the greedy press of his mouth.

From the way Alec breathes Magnus’s name against his lips and hauls him in closer, Magnus thinks that maybe he gets it anyway.


End file.
